When Peace Like a River Was Born from Grief

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the railing of a ship crossing the Atlantic, staring into cold, dark water. Weeks earlier, he had put his wife and four daughters aboard the SS Ville du Havre, bound for England. He planned to join them after finishing business in Chicago. Then the telegram arrived from his wife Anna — just two words that shattered everything: "Saved alone."

The ship had collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes. All four of his daughters — Tanetta, Maggie, Annie, and Bessie — were gone.

Spafford boarded the next available ship. When the captain told him they were passing near the spot where his children had perished, he went to his cabin and wrote words that still echo through sanctuaries today: "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll — whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul."

Faith is not the absence of grief. Spafford did not write those words because the pain had faded. He wrote them while sailing over the very waters that had swallowed his children. Faith is the stubborn insistence that God is still God even when the sea has taken everything.

Some of you are passing over deep water right now. You may not feel peace. But the God who held Spafford in that cabin holds you too. And He is teaching you, even now, to say: it is well.